The finding of discarded electronic storage media still containing data has recently made news. People believed the data had been deleted when a data storage device had been removed and discarded. Computers with information still in the memory have been sold or discarded. Some of these devices contained classified government information and some contained highly sensitive and valuable personal data. The high profile media coverage of some of these happenings and the potential liability and losses from such disclosures have made it more important than ever to provide extra security against such inadvertent loss of information. Now, rather than subject a memory media to erasure of information, there is a move to physically destroy memory media.
While certain memory media may be easily destroyed, like flash memory, so called hard drives with rotating memory storage disks may need extra destruction to help ensure that fragments of the memory disk are small enough that meaningful data cannot be easily extracted from them. One solution to this problem is to shred the hard drive, but such equipment is expensive, noisy and requires maintenance to ensure proper shredding. Such equipment is also not necessarily suited for use in many environments like an office. Such equipment can also be dangerous to use and might provide an opportunity for misuse which can present dangers to a user.
Hard drives for PC's and laptops tend to be of a standard size and shape so they will fit in a bay of predetermined size. The present invention takes advantage of this to provide an apparatus to destroy a hard drive that is of simple construction, positive operation and adapted to use in many environments, including offices without the need for a skilled operator.